Recovery

I've been trying to run a little farther, a little faster and a little more efficiently these past couple weeks but it doesn't seem to be working so well. Slowly and slowly the pace is speeding up and I'm able to run a little farther. Today I ran about 4.7 miles at a 7:45 pace which is a little faster than I have been running. So I decided to look at my running log and see how my recovery went for my last two marathons. It seems that exactly 4 weeks after each I was able to pick up the pace and distance of my runs. Furthermore, I noticed a boost in my running speed another 4 weeks after that. So as I sit here 3 weeks post Tokyo marathon it seems another week of rest is in order before I will be able to start some quality training. As an additional note, I ran a 10k race 3 weeks after each of the previous 2 marathons. Of course, since I wasn't recovered each was a poor 10k for me. Likely that delayed my recovery a bit, but like the rule of thumb says (1 day for each mile of a race) 4 weeks sounds about right for the marathon.

P.S. Today was my first "efficient" run since the marathon as measured by tracking my HR average vs. average pace of my run. This is a good sign but more on that in another post.